This invention relates to a toaster oven, particularly to one having a door placed under a housing of the roaster oven after opened, and a rotating frame horizontally placed in and taken out of the housing for rotating food on the frame, convenient to handle, not taking much space for roasting food in a balanced way, and extremely safe to use.
A common conventional roaster oven generally has a door pivotally connected to a front side of a housing and pivotally opened outward for putting in or taking out food to be toasted and then the door is closed in using. This simple structure has been in use for conventional roaster ovens for long. However, the conventional roaster ovens shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 have an disadvantage that when the door 20 is opened for putting in or taking out food for roasting, the door 20 may automatically swing toward the front side of the roaster oven 10 as shown in FIG. 1, striking on an elbow of a user. In case of taking out just roasted food, the elbow may be burned by the highly hot door 20 and roasted food may fall down by sudden jerking of the arm of the user if worse. In case of the door swings open the most outward, it may take much space in a kitchen as shown in FIG. 1, possible to collide with a person passing by, and if the collide force is too great, the door may be pushed back to the front side of the oven 10. But if the push force against the door 20 should be excessively large, a pivotal shaft of the door may break, letting the door 20 fall off the oven 10.
In addition, the conventional roaster ovens have a semicircular support frame 101, a non-circular insert groove 103 formed in one side, and a cylindrical base 102 formed in opposite side and rotated by a motor 104. Then a rotating frame 30 (or a single pricking rod) for holding or pricking food is provided in the oven as shown in FIG. 2, having two rotating discs 301 located at two opposite sides and some pricking rods 302. A first rotating disc 301 at one side of the supporting frame 101 has a circular postal member 303 and a second rotating disc 301 at one side of the cylindrical base 102 has a non-circular insert rod 304 formed to extend horizontally outward from a center. Then if the rotating frame 30 is to be put in the oven 10, the rotating frame has to be inclined a little to be pushed in the oven 10, with the insert rod 304 fitting in the insert groove 102 of the cylindrical base 102, and then with the post member 303 placed down flatly on the support frame 101. If the rotating frame 30 is to be taken out of the oven, is has to be handled with the action reverse to that just mentioned.
The structure of the conventional roaster oven cannot be said to be convenient to handle with no lighting and a narrow interior space, and in addition, the insert groove 103 of the cylindrical base 102 and the insert rod 304 of the rotating discs 301 are not circular not easy to be aligned to each other for inserting, and moreover, the insert hole 103 is not large, often needing much time in inserting the insert rod 304. Further, a heater in the oven 10 may collide the rotating frame 30 in an inclined angle, if carelessly moved, and in taking out food roasted on the rotatable frame 30, the post 303 of the rotatable disc 301 has to be pushed up a little, causing danger of a hand touch the still hot heater and burned, even if the heater is cut off.
Another disadvantage of the conventional roaster oven is that the all pricking rods 302 are fixed between the two rotatable discs 30, and food of large dimensions such as a whole chick or a whole duck and food of small dimensions such as cut meat, corn, etc. are pierced through the pricking rods 302. Then the inside of food is always farther away from the heater even if the rotating discs 30 are rotating, so the outside of food is always roasted better than the inside of food that is not directly roasted. Then food may have different color in the outside portion and the inside portion owing to unbalanced roasting. Then the main reason is the pricking rods 302 not self rotating between the two rotating discs 301.